“Brigitte thinks she might have run away.”

“My wife suggested that, too.” He laughed. “What we have here is a touch of feminine instinct. Yes, she could have run away.”

I waited to hear how the police followed up that lead and what they’d found, what his view of the likelihood of such a possibility was. When he said nothing, I asked him outright.

“She could be God knows where. It might not be the most charming way to leave a man, but then, no way of leaving someone is charming.”

I’d known Nägelsbach since he had started working as a bailiff at the Heidelberg public prosecutor’s office. He is a quiet, serious, thoughtful police officer. His hobby is building matchstick sculptures, models ranging from the Cologne Cathedral and Neuschwanstein Castle to the Bruchsal prison. He is often in a good mood and likes a good joke. Dark humor, satire, and sarcasm are foreign to him.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He avoided my eyes and looked out the window. The trees were still bare, but their buds were on the verge of bursting open. He raised his hands and let them fall again. “I’m up for the Federal Cross of Merit.”

“Well, congratulations!”

“Congratulations? It’s true I was delighted at first. But…” He took a deep breath. “We’ve got this new chief. One of those energetic, efficient young men. Needless to say, he doesn’t know us like the old chief did. But he’s not particularly interested in us, either. So he walks up to me and says: ‘Herr Nägelsbach, you’ll be getting a Federal Cross of Merit when you leave. I’ll be needing a few pages on you.’ ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know anything about you, but I’m sure you know all there is to know. I want you to write down for me why you deserve the ribbon in your buttonhole.’ Can you imagine?”

“That’s what new young bosses are like nowadays.”

“I told him there was no way I’d do that, to which he replied that it was an official order.”

“And?”

“He just laughed and went on his way.”

“The ‘official order’ bit is just a silly joke.”

“The whole thing’s a silly joke. Federal Crosses of Merit, official orders, the years I sat here, the cases I worked on: so funny, you could split your sides. I realized that much too late. If I had realized it earlier I could have had a lot more fun.”

“Haven’t we always known that?”

“Known what?” He was hurt and defensive.

“That we could have had more fun in life.”

“But…” He didn’t go on. He looked out at the trees again, then at his desk, then at me. The hint of a smile flitted over his mouth. “Yes, perhaps I have always known it.” He pushed his chair back and got up. “I’ve got to head out. Did you jot down old Herr Weller’s address? The Augustinum retirement home in Emmertsgrund. The other parents are dead. By the way, he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. He just some times acts like he does when you ask him a question he doesn’t like.”

Emmertsgrund, Heidelberg ’s newest residential development, lies on a slope above Leimen. The attractive apartments of the Augustinum retirement home face westward and have a view of the Rhine plain, just as the beautiful hospital rooms of the Speyerer Hof Clinic do. A cement factory lies at the foot of the hill, emitting pale, fine dust.

Old Herr Weller and I sat by the window. The two rooms of his apartment were filled with his own furniture, and before we sat down he told me the story of every piece. He also told me about his neighbors, with whom he didn’t get along; the food there, which he didn’t like; and the roster of social activities from folk dancing to silk painting, in which he wasn’t interested. His failing eyesight prevented him from driving, so he was stuck in the Augustinum and felt lonely. I don’t think he really believed that I was collecting donations for the German War Graves Commission, but he was lonely enough not to care who I was. What’s more, we’d been both wounded in action in the Poland Campaign back in the war.

I invented a son, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson, and he told me about his family, and about the death of his daughter.

“Don’t your son-in-law and grandchildren come to see you?” I asked him.

“He hasn’t come since Stephanie died. I don’t hold it against him, but he does have a bad conscience. As for my grandkids, they’re off at school in Switzerland.”

“Why should he have a bad conscience?”

“He should have looked after her. And he shouldn’t have gone in for all that nonsense with that former East German bank.”

While old Herr Weller had been complaining about his living conditions, there was a hint of whining in his voice. Now he spoke resolutely, and I felt the authority he must have once commanded.

“I thought it was all milk and honey with those banks in our new eastern states,” I said.

“Let me tell you something, young man”-he was my age, but to my amazement actually addressed me as “young man”-“you don’t have a background in banking, so I don’t expect you to know any of this. The reason our bank survived was because it downsized, not because it expanded. We man age fortunes, advise investors, supervise funds, and do all that on a high international level. The few local people in Schwetzingen who still have accounts with us don’t really fit the profile anymore. We serve them for old times’ sake. And the clients of the Sorbian Cooperative Bank don’t fit the profile, either, even if there are a lot of them; even if little and often fills the purse.”

“Your son-in-law doesn’t see eye-to-eye with you on this?”

“Him?” he bleated, laughing abruptly and contemptuously. “I’ve no idea what he can see, or if he can see at all, for that matter. He’s a talented boy, but the bank’s not his thing and never has been. He studied medicine, and old Welker ought to have let him become a doctor instead of forcing him into banking because of family tradition-as if things as they now stand still have anything to do with family tradition! It’s all about fast money, new friends, new employees-I’ve no idea if the investment and funds business still exists the way Welker and I set it up. That’s how far things have come: I have no idea what’s going on.”

Before I left he showed me a picture of his daughter. She was not the opulent beauty I’d imagined from seeing the photograph of her grandaunt at Schuler’s place, or from Nägelsbach’s description. She had a slender face, straight dark hair, and stern lips, and though her eyes had fire and soul, they also had an alert intelligence. “She was a banker and had studied law. She inherited the sixth sense for finances that our family developed over the centuries. If she were still alive the bank wouldn’t be in the state it’s in.” He took his out wallet and gave me fifty marks. “For the war graves.”

I drove home by way of Schwetzingen. The waitress at the café greeted me as an old regular. It was three thirty: time for a hot chocolate and a marble cake, and the end of a Friday workday at the Weller & Welker bank. At four o’clock the four young women emerged from the bank. They stood there for a moment and said good-bye to one another, and then two went off along the old moat, the other two in the direction of the train station. At four thirty the three young men appeared and went along the moat in the opposite direction. I left a twenty-mark bill on the table, waved to the waitress, and followed them. They walked quite a distance, past Messplatz and under the railroad tracks to an area where there was a car wash, a home-improvement outlet, and a liquor store. They went into an eight-story hotel and I could see them being given room keys at the front desk.

Back at the office, the light on my answering machine was blinking. Babs’s son, Georg, had found my message and wanted to drop by: Would Sunday or Monday be better for me? Brigitte wanted us to go to the movies Saturday evening. The third call was from Schuler. “I’m sorry if I was a bit abrupt on the phone. I’ve had a chat with Bertram and Gregor, and I know now that you didn’t say anything bad about me. It turns out Bertram has had a little too much on his plate of late, but he’ll be dropping by later. Come and see me again: Perhaps next week? Maybe Monday?” He laughed, but it was not a joyful laugh. “There’s life in the old badger yet. He’s caught himself a fat goose.”